Contrarian Mitsubishi bets on electric vehicles

Mitsubishi says it will sell a minicar powered by lithium-ion batteries and two in-wheel motors in Japan in 2010.

The automaker will begin road tests of the vehicle next year. A four-wheel-drive version also is being developed. Mitsubishi intends to sell the car in Japan. It declined to say whether it might export the cars.

Mitsubishi showed reporters a Colt EV subcompact modified to use the system. The carmaker removed the engine, transmission and fuel tank and added batteries and two in-wheel motors. The car's weight rose just 110 pounds, compared with that of the standard gasoline-powered Colt, to 2,530 pounds.

The car links four 3.7-volt battery cells into a single module. It uses 22 modules to create a 325-volt battery pack.

Short trips

Lithium-ion batteries offer improved power and longer life compared with other batteries. Mitsubishi said its Colt EV has a range of 93 miles on a single charge, roughly double that possible with nickel metal-hydride batteries of the same weight.

Mitsubishi's plans are partly based on usage patterns for Japan's minicars with 660cc engines. Hiroaki Yoshida, senior expert in the advanced vehicle engineering department, says 90 percent of the trips made in minicars are 19 miles or less. The batteries can be recharged using a household outlet.

Tetsuro Aikawa, senior executive officer in charge of product development and environmental affairs, says the system could be used with hybrid vehicles or fuel cell vehicles as well. But he stressed that the system "could replace those very complex hybrid vehicles with a very simple motor and battery."

Hybrids use an internal combustion engine and one or more electric motors to power the wheels.

Fuel cells use hydrogen to create electricity to power the car.

Subsidies

An electric minicar would cost almost three times the price of a standard Colt, Yoshida said. Mitsubishi aims to bring that down to about twice the standard Colt's price.

Government subsidies would cover half the difference between an electric car and a gasoline-powered equivalent, he said. So a buyer would pay only about 1.5 times the price of a standard vehicle.

Previous electric cars have flopped because of their limited range and high price. Although enthusiasts say car buyers should be willing to pay more for the advanced technology, field tests found that shoppers felt they were getting less car - given the reduced range - and therefore should pay less.